July 2010

Every once in a while at Whole Foods they have interesting bulk chocolate, usually by the fine cheeses. One of the items they were actually sampling (this was about two years ago) were Belgian Chocolate Marbles. They were milk, dark and white chocolate swirled pearls. Well, flash forward a few years and I was at the Fancy Food Show where I finally found out who makes them: Callebaut.

Callebaut recently started moving into selling directly to consumers, previously they did most of their products for other confectioners or as ingredients. So maybe these will show up in stores. They’re fun little nuggets, pretty and made from good quality chocolate - real cocoa butter in the white chocolate and a strong dairy flavor.

This is an early review of an upcoming product: Jolly Rancher Awesome Twosome Chews that should hit store shelves in December 2010.

About five years ago Twizzlers, a Hershey’s company, introduced Twerpz (original review). They were cute little nibs of flavored “licorice” that had a grainy and flavored cream filling. They were around for about three years then slowly faded away. Twizzlers introduced a few similar products such as the Twizzlers Sweet & Sour Filled Twists, but didn’t relaunch the Twerpz line. In a completely unrelated area, Hershey’s had a line of chocolate bar “Awesome Twosome” brand mashups around the same time. They were regular Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars with bits of other bars mixed in, like Whoppers, Heath, Almond Joy and Reese’s Pieces.

So it appears that this new product, now under the Jolly Rancher brand is taking over the Twizzlers Twerpz product, but giving it a little twist by combing two flavors in each piece (that’s the Twosome part).

The flavors of the Awesome Twosome Chews are standards in the Jolly Rancher palette. One is Watermelon on the outside and has a Green Apple filling. The other is Cherry on the outside and has an Orange filling. Each has a sour grainy dusting.

The Watermelon/Green Apple is kind of fun because it’s a reverse of the colors of an actual watermelon. That’s about where the fun for me ended. The package itself smells rather plastic and artificial, like bubble gum, wood glue and one of those discount movie palaces that always smells a little damp. They’re soft and chewy and the sour coating isn’t that powerful, just a nice zap.

The tube of watermelon licorice is well flavored, in the Jolly Rancher arena, which is good if you like that sort of thing. The green apple inside goes pretty well, but again, horribly artificial and acidic in a way that reminds me of burps.

The Cherry/Orange was at least made up of one flavor that I generally like. The cherry chew part was very flavorful, but sadly it was a very bad flavor. The use of food coloring and one note of medicinal cherry kept me from enjoying it at all. There were only four of these in my bag, so I didn’t get a lot to try. The paste filling was an interesting texture but in the case of the orange one, far too mild and like Tang instead of a well rounded zesty orange to stand up to the cherry.

The aftertaste was like I’d chewed on PlayDoh for a while and then swallowed Country Time Lemonade drink mix. However, I know that there are folks who are really looking forward to these. I like the concept but the texture, flavors and general execution just doesn’t fit my style.

Jelly Belly Confections makes a classic licorice bridge mix that has jelly beans, buttons, mellocremes and pastels. Personally, the pastels (candy coated licorice nibs) are my favorite. But I found this abridged mix that just has jelly beans, licorice bears and buttons at the Dollar General, certainly cheaper but missing the fun stuff.

Melville’s Candy has always made stunning molded lollipops, they even have a new line with all natural ingredients. The flavors are more subtle, but then I feel like it’s more like the classic barley sugar pop than an intensely flavored hard candy pop.